Heavenly Sword demo coming "very soon"

Q: When are we getting a demo?
NM: I can confirm that we are, of course, going to be releasing a demo for Heavenly Sword…and soon! This will be downloadable via the Playstation Network…so keep an eye out for this in the very near future…and i mean very near future!"

That sounds positive. Am looking forward to a decent demo on the store and hearing 'very soon' makes me think it has to be in the next couple of weeks.

Ahab wrote:
Well that little arena and the original one with the tables and stuff But where's the shakycam footage? Were people referring to the old vid?

That's actually a different arena? That doesn't reassure me much.

To be serious for a minute, I was kinda hoping for a more "God of War" experience - smashing things in the face is all well and good, but without a bit of exploring and puzzling and stuff it's just... well... smashing things in the face. Repeatedly. Which (for me at least) gets old pretty fast.

Blerk wrote:
To be serious for a minute, I was kinda hoping for a more "God of War" experience - smashing things in the face is all well and good, but without a bit of exploring and puzzling and stuff it's just... well... smashing things in the face. Repeatedly. Which (for me at least) gets old pretty fast.

I'm sure it'll have that. There's really not been a lot of footage released so far, and it's understandable that that which has been shown has focused on the fighting, because that makes for better viewing than someone wandering around for a bit and opening a chest (for example).

Ahab wrote:
Yeah, maybe, but it looked very much like game slowdown, always in the busiest moments.

Seemed to me it was more the moments when the camera was making fast movements, which is much more likely to be the video struggling, rather than the game. When the camera was reasonably static there's no slowdown, even when there's a lot going on.

Also, I didn't like this from the QA:

Q: Have you managed to push it to 1080p/60frames yet?
NM: Heavenly Sword will be delivered in 720p HD

1080p is never going to happen with a game that looks as good as this. The whole 1080p/real high defintion stuff was just Sony spouting bollocks as per usual. As for whether it'll run in 60fps, he didn't comment. You choose to take that as a sign it's going to have problems. I choose to take it as a sign that they're still working hard to get it running at 60fps and don't want to make promises that won't come true. I'd settle for a solid 30fps anyway.

To be honest I'm not really sure why Sony thought it would be a good idea to pour resources into a game like this.

Its clear that the hack n' slasher/adventure genre had already reached saturation point years ago. God of War, Devil May Cry, Ninja Gaiden etc. etc. etc. The finished article is going to have to be absolutely amazing to even stand out. The resources would have been better used trying to bring the PS3 something distinctive and new.

One of the most disappointing things about this generation is that Sony don't seem to be putting money into unproven and off the wall games like they used to. There were a lot of failures and games that were interesting but don't quite work such as Ka/Mr. Mosquito. But there were also titles such as Vib Ribbon, Parappa the Rapper, Intelligent Qube/Kurushi and ICO.

I bet the resources soaked up by Heavenly Sword could have funded a lot of Vib Ribbon scale projects. At best Heavenly Sword can be a competent entry into an already overcrowded genre.